SitemapBy many metrics, the revitalization efforts in Youngstown have been successful. Downtown is regaining its vibrancy, large development projects have gotten underway in recent years and crime is dropping.
But the success isn’t being felt by all. It was that segment of the city that was the focus of the City Club of the Mahoning Valley’s “Views & Brews: Revitalizing Youngstown” discussion Tuesday night.
“Although we really see a lot happening downtown and in the corridors, there’s still some issues with poverty, crime rates and inner city states,” said Lynn Bilal, the organization’s project director. “We are listening. We hear what you’re saying about issues happening around development we see and hopefully they can have ideas about what can be done and how we can reframe revitalizing Youngstown.”
The panel, moderated by Youngstown Neighborhood Development Corp. Executive Director Ian Beniston, featured Youngstown native and Third Space Action Lab co-founder Evelyn Burnett, YNDC founding director and current Neighborhood Allies President Presley Gillespie and Alan Mallach, author of “The Divided City: Poverty and Prosperity in Urban America.”
What could most impact the revitalization of Youngstown, especially beyond the central business district and major corridors, is the creation of stable, well paying jobs, the panelists agreed.
“Half of the adult men in the city of Youngstown are unemployed, but when we look at stats from the [Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber], they say there are 15,000 unfilled jobs in the region,” said Beniston before the panel. “Clearly, there’s a challenge we all need to work together on.”
Mallach noted that he found a vast majority of people working within Youngstown city limits earning more than $40,000 per year live outside the city. To read the full story from The Business Journal, click here.